Recent history has seen great improvements in the storage and organization of information. Particularly noteworthy are the advances in data storage using computer-based archival systems. However, the increase in the amount and variety of information stored in electronic format has resulted in new problems. Finding relevant information may require sorting through a vast collection of files, documents, code segments, and so on (collectively ‘substantive knowledge entities’) located in disparate knowledge systems to find information pertaining to a particular problem or task.
For example, in the software industry, a particular software project may have several stages. At the beginning, the project is designed and implemented in code form. This development stage is followed by a test stage. The completed software is then sold and possibly tailored to each customer according to the customer's specific needs. After the sale, the developer provides technical support, including the development of software fixes to resolve errors.
Typically, each of these stages is negotiated by an autonomous business unit isolated from the business units managing the software in other stages. Each stage may include several phases, with each phase being executed by one of several smaller business units, which often act in isolation as well. The software test stage, for example, typically includes the phases unit test, functional verification test, system test, integration, performance and service test, each of which is done independently.
Typically, each of the phases generates knowledge in the form of substantive knowledge entities which are stored in a knowledge base specific to the phase. However, data from each phase is known only to the business unit that carries out that phase, so that knowledge is not carried over to subsequent phases.
Recent advances in the art have attempted to resolve these difficulties. One approach of the prior art is to replicate the substantive knowledge entities to one or more shared repositories. This approach requires safeguards to ensure that information in the shared repositories is consistent with information in the knowledge bases, which can be complex to implement, error-prone, and costly.
It is therefore a challenge to develop strategies for management of federated information in associated knowledge systems to overcome these, and other, disadvantages.